Recently, author Ann Bauer wrote about her career being ‘sponsored’ by her husband. I think what she called for – more honesty about how writers make their living – is a good thing. At the same, I think it’s also important to write about WHY we write.
Bauer’s article, if taken as representative as the experience of all women writers, is problematic (which it isn’t meant to, to be fair to the writer). There are many noteworthy writers who produce excellent works of fiction and non-fiction, 'sponsored' by their husbands – but there are also many writers and artists whose work has been enabled by the high-paying careers of their wives.
The other issue that I have is the assumption that to produce a book, unless you’re that rare breed of super-bestselling writer, you’ve got to have financial support from either a husband, wife or parents. I come arose this often. People who believe that my choice to be a writer, is a choice enabled by luxury, not of necessity.
I beg to differ. I wanted to be anything but a writer – my first book was published when I was 12, and it was a success, but all of the book tours and publicity, experienced as a teenager, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I tried to be many other things – and was forced to admit defeat, at 24, after trying tried many different jobs.
A Room of One's Own
I wanted to write a novel but at the same time, I wasn’t willing to live with my parents or ask them for support. I had read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own when I was seventeen. The experience of many, many other women novelists proves that Virginia Woolf doesn’t hold for everyone, but her premise – that if a woman wants to write fiction, she must have money and a room of her own – struck me powerfully. It’s not always been able to be something that I’ve followed to the letter, but her premise has stayed with me.
So let me tell you what I did to make it work financially. Yes, I had a book out already – The Mahabharata – A Child’s View. Though it sells very well, it doesn’t make me enough to live on. I quit my job, with a lakh and a half of savings in hand, hoping that this would see me through my novel.
At the same time, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, suffered from a stroke. It made sense then, for me, to live with her – she needed help, and someone to look after her, and I needed a place to live rent-free. This seemed a good arrangement. At that time, I thought she would recover in a few months.
This didn’t happen. It turned out, as we discovered, that she had Alzheimer’s. She deteriorated slowly, painfully, over the next couple of years. For four years, my life turned into a crazy mess of hiring and coordinating physiotherapists, nurses (we went through thirty six in four years), maids, lab technicians and cooks.
Coordinating the mad scramble of getting an immobile invalid from her bed into the elevator, to a taxi and ferried to appointments with doctors and specialists. Managing incessant health emergencies – illnesses, fainting fits, and strokes. Sorting out domestic crises. Learning how to change adult diapers. Buying drugs for dementia that weren’t available in India as yet on the black market. Crawling under a bed and barking, when my grandmother, in the grip of a hallucination, wanted to find her long-dead dog. Making up rhymes and songs to persuade my eighty-year old grandmother to eat.
It was difficult, crazy, heartbreaking and fun.
Did I get any writing done?
Yes. I wrote a graphic novel, a proper novel, two screenplays, countless articles, essays and reviews over a four year period. Did I make money? Not a whole lot – but enough to manage paying phone bills, buying a computer, necessities, clothes and make payments on a college loan.
A Room of One's Own Round 2: Success and Failure
Three years ago, my grandmother needed full-time hospitalisation. She wasn’t eating, and there was talk of using feeding tubes. None of the nurses I hired was willing to work in such circumstances. I couldn’t keep her at home anymore and was forced to admit her to a nursing home for dementia.
After we did this, I was forced to reassess my finances. I hadn’t been able to get any paid work in the last four months – not only was grandmother ill, but Sita’s Ramayana had achieved some success. Although I was yet to see royalties, I had to spent a lot of time doing interviews, photo shoots, giving talks and attending literary festivals. This was wonderful for my career but – none of this made me any money.
Stroke of Luck
I needed to make money – and fast. I had little over ten thousand rupees left in my bank account, and took up a position with a Bangalore-based magazine on a part-time basis. I was incredibly fortunate when a lucrative job materialised a few months later – writing television scripts in Afghanistan.
I would have gone anyway, even if I wasn’t broke, but the financial prospects made it even more appealing. Again, it was crazy, difficult, heartbreaking and fun. I ended coming back up with many friends, wonderful memories and substantial savings but I also came back with chronic bronchitis, a health condition that still resurfaces every couple of months, and a mild form of PTSD.
Among other things, I found it impossible to sleep for a year. I’d wake up at the slightest sound and wouldn't be able back to sleep. This is an effect of hyper-vigilance, an instinct that you can develop when you live in a conflict-zone. I couldn’t turn this off when I got back home. My mother, discovering that I slept with a hoard of knives in my bed-side drawer, and witness to panic attacks where I would prowl around the house believing that an intruder was present – insisted that I live with her and my father until I got better.
That was the last one and a half years. Woolf, in my case, still holds true – I haven’t able to write any “good” fiction, while living with my parents. But now things are looking up. After three books, and eight years of being a writer – I’ve finally got a fellowship, and I’ve also secured a grant to work on my next book.
Fun Times
I realise that I’ve listed all the difficult bits. There’s been a lot of fun, and I have learnt so much. I earned my income last year by ghostwriting a business book and learnt all about hedging and commodities trading from an expert.
Over the last six years I’ve frequented many receptions and waiting rooms of studios and production companies in Mumbai and have perfected the art of making up film pitches on the spot. (There’s an easy formula to it – mash up two foreign films, cite an Indian film for atmosphere, and throw in two big name actors into the resulting mix. My favourite effort involved marrying the plots of Catwoman and Robin Hood, with a Jab We Met Vibe.)
There are many other writers who face greater challenges.What's helped me, though, is that I knew I would do whatever it took to make writing work, even when broke, to make this choice sustainable and to earn respect. I’ve learnt to be resourceful, flexible and to accept failure at times. This makes me a better writer and, more importantly, has made me ask:
WHY do we feel compelled to write?
What purpose does writing serve, what function do writers perform in society? Do we have obligations towards our readers?
Despite the plethora of literature festivals in this country, there’s little respect for writing as a professional choice in India, but I have come to believe that writers, and literature, are important to society. There are important battles that are being fought in India where writers are on the front-lines – battles concerning the availability of information, secularism and freedom of expression.
It’s also important to write books that entertain – books that provide escape, feed the imagination, make you laugh. It’s equally important to write books that ask provocative questions and prompt introspection. We need more writers and artists who believe that what they do is relevant to society and their readers – whether they be “sponsored” by their husbands, wives, parents or by themselves.
Samhita Arni is the author of The Missing Queen and the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Sita's Ramayana.
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Bauer’s article, if taken as representative as the experience of all women writers, is problematic (which it isn’t meant to, to be fair to the writer). There are many noteworthy writers who produce excellent works of fiction and non-fiction, 'sponsored' by their husbands – but there are also many writers and artists whose work has been enabled by the high-paying careers of their wives.
The other issue that I have is the assumption that to produce a book, unless you’re that rare breed of super-bestselling writer, you’ve got to have financial support from either a husband, wife or parents. I come arose this often. People who believe that my choice to be a writer, is a choice enabled by luxury, not of necessity.
I beg to differ. I wanted to be anything but a writer – my first book was published when I was 12, and it was a success, but all of the book tours and publicity, experienced as a teenager, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I tried to be many other things – and was forced to admit defeat, at 24, after trying tried many different jobs.
A Room of One's Own
I wanted to write a novel but at the same time, I wasn’t willing to live with my parents or ask them for support. I had read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own when I was seventeen. The experience of many, many other women novelists proves that Virginia Woolf doesn’t hold for everyone, but her premise – that if a woman wants to write fiction, she must have money and a room of her own – struck me powerfully. It’s not always been able to be something that I’ve followed to the letter, but her premise has stayed with me.
So let me tell you what I did to make it work financially. Yes, I had a book out already – The Mahabharata – A Child’s View. Though it sells very well, it doesn’t make me enough to live on. I quit my job, with a lakh and a half of savings in hand, hoping that this would see me through my novel.
At the same time, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, suffered from a stroke. It made sense then, for me, to live with her – she needed help, and someone to look after her, and I needed a place to live rent-free. This seemed a good arrangement. At that time, I thought she would recover in a few months.
This didn’t happen. It turned out, as we discovered, that she had Alzheimer’s. She deteriorated slowly, painfully, over the next couple of years. For four years, my life turned into a crazy mess of hiring and coordinating physiotherapists, nurses (we went through thirty six in four years), maids, lab technicians and cooks.
Coordinating the mad scramble of getting an immobile invalid from her bed into the elevator, to a taxi and ferried to appointments with doctors and specialists. Managing incessant health emergencies – illnesses, fainting fits, and strokes. Sorting out domestic crises. Learning how to change adult diapers. Buying drugs for dementia that weren’t available in India as yet on the black market. Crawling under a bed and barking, when my grandmother, in the grip of a hallucination, wanted to find her long-dead dog. Making up rhymes and songs to persuade my eighty-year old grandmother to eat.
It was difficult, crazy, heartbreaking and fun.
Did I get any writing done?
Yes. I wrote a graphic novel, a proper novel, two screenplays, countless articles, essays and reviews over a four year period. Did I make money? Not a whole lot – but enough to manage paying phone bills, buying a computer, necessities, clothes and make payments on a college loan.
A Room of One's Own Round 2: Success and Failure
Three years ago, my grandmother needed full-time hospitalisation. She wasn’t eating, and there was talk of using feeding tubes. None of the nurses I hired was willing to work in such circumstances. I couldn’t keep her at home anymore and was forced to admit her to a nursing home for dementia.
After we did this, I was forced to reassess my finances. I hadn’t been able to get any paid work in the last four months – not only was grandmother ill, but Sita’s Ramayana had achieved some success. Although I was yet to see royalties, I had to spent a lot of time doing interviews, photo shoots, giving talks and attending literary festivals. This was wonderful for my career but – none of this made me any money.
Stroke of Luck
I needed to make money – and fast. I had little over ten thousand rupees left in my bank account, and took up a position with a Bangalore-based magazine on a part-time basis. I was incredibly fortunate when a lucrative job materialised a few months later – writing television scripts in Afghanistan.
I would have gone anyway, even if I wasn’t broke, but the financial prospects made it even more appealing. Again, it was crazy, difficult, heartbreaking and fun. I ended coming back up with many friends, wonderful memories and substantial savings but I also came back with chronic bronchitis, a health condition that still resurfaces every couple of months, and a mild form of PTSD.
Among other things, I found it impossible to sleep for a year. I’d wake up at the slightest sound and wouldn't be able back to sleep. This is an effect of hyper-vigilance, an instinct that you can develop when you live in a conflict-zone. I couldn’t turn this off when I got back home. My mother, discovering that I slept with a hoard of knives in my bed-side drawer, and witness to panic attacks where I would prowl around the house believing that an intruder was present – insisted that I live with her and my father until I got better.
That was the last one and a half years. Woolf, in my case, still holds true – I haven’t able to write any “good” fiction, while living with my parents. But now things are looking up. After three books, and eight years of being a writer – I’ve finally got a fellowship, and I’ve also secured a grant to work on my next book.
Fun Times
I realise that I’ve listed all the difficult bits. There’s been a lot of fun, and I have learnt so much. I earned my income last year by ghostwriting a business book and learnt all about hedging and commodities trading from an expert.
Over the last six years I’ve frequented many receptions and waiting rooms of studios and production companies in Mumbai and have perfected the art of making up film pitches on the spot. (There’s an easy formula to it – mash up two foreign films, cite an Indian film for atmosphere, and throw in two big name actors into the resulting mix. My favourite effort involved marrying the plots of Catwoman and Robin Hood, with a Jab We Met Vibe.)
There are many other writers who face greater challenges.What's helped me, though, is that I knew I would do whatever it took to make writing work, even when broke, to make this choice sustainable and to earn respect. I’ve learnt to be resourceful, flexible and to accept failure at times. This makes me a better writer and, more importantly, has made me ask:
WHY do we feel compelled to write?
What purpose does writing serve, what function do writers perform in society? Do we have obligations towards our readers?
Despite the plethora of literature festivals in this country, there’s little respect for writing as a professional choice in India, but I have come to believe that writers, and literature, are important to society. There are important battles that are being fought in India where writers are on the front-lines – battles concerning the availability of information, secularism and freedom of expression.
It’s also important to write books that entertain – books that provide escape, feed the imagination, make you laugh. It’s equally important to write books that ask provocative questions and prompt introspection. We need more writers and artists who believe that what they do is relevant to society and their readers – whether they be “sponsored” by their husbands, wives, parents or by themselves.
Samhita Arni is the author of The Missing Queen and the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Sita's Ramayana.
